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It was this statement that induced me to insert in the terms that he was to draw rations for his men from his own supplies. On the 4th of July General Holmes, with an army of eight or nine thousand men belonging to the trans-Mississippi department, made an attack upon Helena, Arkansas. He was totally defeated by General Prentiss, who was holding Helena with less than forty-two hundred soldiers.
I suggested to the General-in-chief the idea of a campaign against Mobile, starting from Lake Pontchartrain. Halleck preferred another course. The possession of the trans-Mississippi by the Union forces seemed to possess more importance in his mind than almost any campaign east of the Mississippi.
He kept us in hot water almost continually in the Trans-Mississippi department, and made us a world of trouble. But I feel constrained to remark that, in reporting his military operations, he was, sometimes, a most monumental well, I'll scratch out the "short and ugly" word I have written, and substitute "artist," and let it go at that.
Like destroying angels, seconded by Rosecrans, Thomas, and McPherson, these great captains drew out of the smoke of battle, gigantic figures towering above all their rivals. Maxime Valois bitterly deplored the uselessness of the war in the trans-Mississippi section of the Confederacy.
And on the 17th of February, 1864, the Rebel Congress passed an Act which provides in its first section "That all male Free Negroes * resident in the Confederate States, between the ages of eighteen and fifty years, shall be held liable to perform such duties with the Army, or in connection with the Military defenses of the Country, in the way of work upon the fortifications, or in Government works for the production or preparation of materials of War, or in Military hospitals, as the Secretary of War or the Commanding General of the Trans-Mississippi Department may, from time to time, prescribe:" while the third section provides that when the Secretary of War shall "be unable to procure the service of Slaves in any Military Department, then he is authorized to impress the services of as many male Slaves, not to exceed twenty thousand, as may be required, from time to time, to discharge the duties indicated in the first section of the Act."
The most easterly of these was the Department of the Ohio, General Schofield commanding; the next was the Department of the Cumberland, General Thomas commanding; the third the Department of the Tennessee, General McPherson commanding; and General Steele still commanded the trans-Mississippi, or Department of Arkansas.
Bragg's invasion of Kentucky seemed to be succeeding at this time. The trans-Mississippi line still held at Vicksburg and Port Hudson. Richmond had been saved. Washington was menaced.
Thus it is plain that the early settlers of Iowa had no legal right to advance beyond the surveyed country, mark off claims, and occupy and cultivate lands which had not been surveyed and to which the United States had not issued a warrant, patent, or certificate of purchase. But the pioneers on their way to the trans-Mississippi prairies did not pause to read the United States Statutes at Large.
Before I came into command, these troops had been scattered over the trans-Mississippi department in such a way that they could not be, or were not, gotten back in time to take any part in the original movement; hence the consideration, which had caused Mobile to be selected as the objective point for Sherman's army to find his next base of supplies after having cut loose from Atlanta, no longer existed.
He was silent upon the really serious matter, the patrol of the river by Federal gunboats which rendered commerce with the Trans-Mississippi all but impossible. This report, dated the 26th of November, gives a roseate view of the war in Tennessee and enlarges upon that dreadful battle of Chickamauga which "ranks as one of the grandest victories of the war."
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